Sarah Doudney

DOUDNEY, Sarah. b. Portsmouth, Hampshire, 15 January 1841; d. Oxford, 15 December 1926. She was educated in Southsea at a school for French girls, Madame Dowell’s College. Doudney showed early promise as a writer: her poem, ‘The Lesson of the Water Mill’, which became a popular song, was written when she was 15. She spent most of her life in the village of Cosham, near Portsmouth, but moved to Oxford in 1926. She wrote a considerable amount of religious fiction, mainly for young people. Some of it was published by the Religious Tract Society (Janet Darney, 1873, The Great Salterns, 1875); others by the Sunday School Union (Under Gray Walls, 1871, Archie’s Old Desk, 1872, Marion’s Three...